They shed their sense of responsibility
Long ago, when they lost their votes, and the bribes; the mob
That used to grant power, high office, the legions, everything,
Curtails its desires, and reveals its anxiety for two things only,
Juvenal, Satires
I had said at least once that the “original sin” of the US Constitution is not slavery, horrible as it was, because slavery could have been, and mostly was, eliminated by the constitutional process. But the Founders, deliberately rejecting the British parliamentary system, also rejected its party politics and assumed them to be an aberration rather than the political default. So instead of having a Constitution that either accounted for partisanship or sought to eliminate it, they simply assumed that all races would be conducted on a non-partisan basis, which in the first few elections after President Washington proved not to be the case. Over the years, the two parties, whichever they happened to be, adapted the system to serve them rather than the other way around, which is how, among other things, the authoritarian party enacted Jim Crow laws and other institutions to preserve the spirit if not the letter of slavery. The party system is also how, for instance, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell was able to effectively veto President Barack Obama’s last nominee for the Supreme Court by preventing the nomination from even getting to the floor, where it might have passed. Nowhere in Article I of the Constitution does it give the Senate Majority Leader that power, perhaps because Article I says nothing establishing an office of Senate Majority Leader.
In fact, the problem is even deeper than that. The problem isn’t just that the Founders failed to check a partisan tendency that led to the preservation of our aristocratic groups, in many respects they sought to do this very thing. Followers of Antiquity, they rejected existing models ranging from the Iroquois Confederacy to the Confederation Helvetica, instead modeling the new Constitution on the Roman Republic, even knowing how it ended up. Like Rome, the structure is based on a Senate composed of an aristocratic, land-holding class, with some accomodation for the greater populace. And Rome was supposed to have most of its government done via the Senate, with its executive (consul) being limited to a few functions for specific purposes, but as the senatorial families squabbled with each other, they ended up turning more and more power to the executive just to get anything done, which is how the consul became a Dictator, then a Caesar, then an Imperator, and finally an absolute monarch.
This might seem familiar.
So it really doesn’t surprise me that America could turn into another Roman Empire, since that model is partly baked in. But I am still a patriotic American, and frankly, I find it a Goddamn insult that our first dynastic monarch could be an inbred slug that would make the Senators who approved Elagabalus retch.
There is this one politics show in the UK called “The Rest is Politics” that had a segment discussing “The Positives of a Trump Presidency”. The YouTube clip lasted 1 minute 15 seconds.
There will be some time to go over exactly what Democrats did wrong, and where they can go from here. If, as in the last elections both for and against Trump, people were dissatisfied with the party in power, Democrats ought to have a chance to come back. The problem is they may not get the chance. The model of “post liberal” or “illiberal” government is not to start martial law on Day One, it’s to keep all the trappings of a multiparty republic but to marginalize all opposition so that they can never get any real power. That’s what they did in Hungary and Venezuela (not to mention Russia) and it’s what they’re going to do here. We know this because in some states they already have.
Specifically, in Florida this election, there were state questions on the ballot, one being Question 3 (legalizing marijuana) and Question 4 (legalizing the right to your own uterus) and each got over 56 percent support, but in DeSantis Florida, you need 60 percent for an amendment to pass. A clear majority isn’t enough.
That’s the model. DeSantis Land is actually the best we can expect. And if as seems likely, the House remains Republican, there won’t be anybody stopping these guys from doing what they want to do. Certainly not the Supreme Court.
The problem with saying “Orange Man Bad” is not that it isn’t true, it’s that no one wanted to hear it. Yeah, maybe nobody cared that liberals were all offended that Trump used R-rated language and fellated a mic on stage. That’s part of the appeal. Because punk rock may not sell records anymore, but it’s great for politics. Saying that Trump is a fascist is true, but it’s also irrelevant. Because nobody cares if the government is fascist as long as the economy works. And you know, fair enough. The problem isn’t that you could make a case for a hypothetical Republican or for Trump in his first term (and I could), it’s that Trump in the here and now does not justify that argument.
To some extent if you were to judge the Trump economy only before COVID, you could say that it was a better economy than the Biden/Harris inflationary economy, and that would make a Trump presidency better. But there’s two problems: One, the wonderful Trump economy was actually wrecked by Trump himself, because of his fiasco response to COVID, and two, his main economic policy for the second term is a broad-based tariff program that would effectively shift the tax burden from the wealthiest to the middle class by forcing them to pay higher prices for goods, which pretty much everybody but Trump knows would be disastrous for the economy.
You could have had your hypothetical perfect Barack-Obama-meets-Jack-Kennedy Democrat running against Trump and it wouldn’t have mattered against a media and public that idolized Trump precisely because of his flaws. They support him because he’s vulgar. They support him because he’s ignorant. They voted for him because he hates everybody else.
We decided to have this guy, with his cotton-candy hair, circus peanut skin and retarded toad grin, saying that THIS is what WE want, because THAT is what we think we ARE.
After all, this IS a democracy. NOT a republic.
A comedian I follow on Facebook posted: “I’m sorry to say it, but the best way to increase the median IQ of this country is to have another pandemic.” And I think he’s right.
See, despite all the changes to my own politics, I still define myself as more right-wing than left-wing. For one thing, we have a party based on altruism and political correctness, and look where that got us. But I actually describe myself as a Social Darwinist. Which is exactly why I am against fascism. You would think otherwise, since we think of the two as synonymous. But in biology, Darwin meant “survival of the fittest” to mean “survival of the species best adapted to its environment.” The phrase is a misnomer because it’s meant to endorse “survival of the most fascist.” But fascism, social controls, using force to defy reality, are the exact opposite of adapting to the environment. And the results on the Right were a stagnating economy and living conditions even before going to war. And left-wing collectivism in the communist countries just meant the decline took place over decades instead of years. Darwinism, applied to society, ought to mean the culture (not the ethnic group) best capable of surviving and adapting to the world. But that requires systems that are accountable and capable of responding to information, as opposed to denying information to preserve an ideological agenda.
I had mentioned previously that we have a media environment that created a society where people not only don’t know the difference between reality and media, but don’t want to know. I had also said in 2020 that some people actually want a mass collapse and die-off to clear out the rot. It’s the only explanation for why so many voters actively opposed the one party that still believes in preserving the system. The system isn’t working for them. So rather than fix it, let’s just blow it up.
And when you don’t have a public infrastructure, you don’t have a health system, you don’t have disaster relief, and government serves no purpose except forcing you to pay taxes to support the already rich, you find out whether or not you can survive on just your resources.
Survival of the fittest.
I’m cold about this, but apparently some people need to learn things the hard way. We have developed an environment where people think that we have always had rule of law and social supports and therefore that’s not going to change. But that stuff takes maintenance, and it takes effort. It can be destroyed by our decision making. And you can’t demand radical change and not get radical consequences.
And if you decide you don’t want “the system”, there are consequences, and you’re about to suffer them. And so will everyone around you who knew better. And unlike the Germans in 1945, you won’t get to cry and say you weren’t warned. Because they didn’t have an example from history. This country can’t even learn from four years ago. And the Trump from four years ago is the best we can expect. And because of Trump at his best, over 300K people died from an easily preventable virus. You think the next four years will be better? Well, for some reason, I’m not very optimistic.